How to win at Tic-Tac-Toe

[Muzozavr]

Want to become a Tic-Tac-Toe master and start winning at a game which all too often ends in a draw?
Surprisingly few people know optimal strategies of Tic-Tac-Toe. It's here:
http://mycanes.miami.edu/~r.aycock/ttt.pdf

It's actually pretty good, considering that it's the only place where I could find comprehensive information about the optimal for the SECOND player. Even the first player can sometimes fall into a trap.

If you feel REALLY evil, mix and match center and corner starts as player 1 and try to use a different corner whenever you can. This will make it harder to pick your strategies apart. You can even pick the edge a few times. Just be sure not to fall into a trap yourself then! And as player 2, you need to hope for a wrongly done edge start from player 1.

[mqdar]

Tic-Tac-Toe isn't exactly a very complex game. It's a 3x3 board. There is no way to avoid getting a 'cat' as that person says. However, it shows in a very compact way that in those sorts of games (even chess), both players have an equal chance of winning, and that if you always chose the optimal move, you would always end in a draw. Chess is a lot more complicated though, so you get a sort of 'illusion.'
You could look pretty stupid though, looking at the boarding thinking, thinking of the best move...

[Muzozavr]

Now, games don't always end in a draw with optimal moves, and we cannot be sure about chess!

A simple example of a "sure win" game for one of the players is a row of matches, where you can take either 1, 2, or 3 matches in a turn. The player who gets the last match loses.
In this case, a player will lose if he begins with 4n+1 matches, otherwise he will win, by taking the exact number of matches, to force 4n+1 for the SECOND player. Then if he takes 1 match, you take 3, if he takes 2, you take 2, if he takes 3, you take 1.
A single mistake can turn the tables here, so... you can play against people who don't know the secret and win nearly always.



And about Tic-Tac-Toe, I knew about the center starts, but not about the corner starts, so... you always learn something new.